Hyperrealism exhibition at Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid

In April, we spent a couple of days in Madrid. This was my first visit and one priority was to see the artworks in the Prado Gallery. We also found time to visit the Thyssen - Bornemisza Museum and I chose to look at their Hyperrealism exhibition which surveys the work of the Photorealism and Hyperrealism movement over the past 40 years.
The 66 works were arranged by theme: Still life, On the road (vehicles etc), Cityscapes and finally, People and portraits. Whilst only one work was a photograph, there were numerous similarities with photography.
The earlier works, produced in the time of film photography were referred to as "photorealistic", but with the advent of digital photography, the terminology "hyperreaslistic" is considered to be more appropriate.
The still lifes were uniformly large in size, width and height of 2 metres or more. This large scale allows the viewer to consider every detail of the subjects portrayed. This imitates the impact of blowing up photographic images to this size or larger. From a photographers viewpoint, the huge size reveals the artifacts of photography, for example, shallow depth of field, blur and manipulation of shadows and highlights. I looked carefully at the still lifes to see if I could see any apparent anomalies in the presentation of three dimensional space, lighting etc. Prompted by Kander's maxim (previous blog), I had half expected that the artists would include something "not quite right" to intrigue the viewer.  The only one where I thought something might be wrong was a painting by Audrey Flack "Queen" (1975-6). To me, the three dimensional space seemed to defy gravity. In addition, some of the shadows seemed artificial and the objects which were partly out of the frame did not seem quite right. The saturated colours of this (and the other paintings) add to this feeling of unreality.
I have subsequently had the chance to look at the artists website and to watch a brief interview she gave at the exhibition opening. This was interesting is several ways:

• She works from photographs, taken mostly with a Hasselblad camera. As a result, the compositions are square, as the Hasselblad produces a square image. 
• She suggests that one the main aims of these works was to counteract the art school policy prevailing in the 60's and 70's that abstract art was superior to representational art. It did not seem, therefore that the intention was to reveal the artificiality of photographs. Indeed, she produces photographic works with similar subject matter. 

Some of the more recent works, especially the cityscapes for example Raphaella Spence Las Vegas (2011), presented views where I felt the unreality derived from  the artificial manipulation of shadows and highlights. They gave me a similar impression to photographs where HDR techniques have been pushed to, or even beyond, the limits of normality. An example was
I was interested to see that Tom Blackwell had used shop window displays and reflections to create layered compositions. This was a professional version of what my photograph Image 3 - Dinner with friends was trying to achieve.
In the On the road section, I was pleased to see Ralph Goings "Airstream" (1970) which I had seen in book illustration some years back. The most striking painting was however "Gator Chomp" by Peter Maier. The colours and shapes of the shiny bodywork of the vehicles are extremely eye-catching.
These images are interesting as hybrids between photography and painting. It seems that many of the artists worked from photographs. The initial process of creating the composition was probably the same procedures that a photographer would have used. It is the "post production work flow" to use photographic terminology that diverges between the two. A photographer will typically reproduce the image for gallery display using digital printing equipment, selecting papers and mountings to suit. Painters adopting the hyperreaslism style would reproduce the image manually using canvas/board, paint etc.
I was fortunate recently that a friend used one of my photographs from the Olympics as the composition for a watercolour painting. The painting now hangs in our flat, and I know think of it as a painting, not a photograph.